Carlist Rieekan was seven minutes late.
Albrina had put away her files in preparation for the appointment, and sat at her desk trying not to grow irritated. She would readily forgive him when he appeared; given his rank, it was probably surprising he had never been late before.
A droid finally told her of his arrival, and she noted the time on today's session file. Then she opened the door to greet him.
He looked terrible, Albrina Renzatl thought. He was perched on the edge of a chair, hunched over with his elbows on his knees and face directed at the floor. When he heard the door open he looked up. His eyes were red, she noted; bloodshot from exhaustion. His thick hair was last combed a few days ago.
He sprang to his feet and rushed toward her office.
Something had happened, Albrina thought. She took her seat, her movements consciously deliberate and patient as always. First she set up the transcriptor, arranged her skirt, and readied the stylus in her hand.
"I almost canceled," General Rieekan said while she got ready. There was a cut on his cheek. The blood was clotting, for the droplet was stopped; the color was dark and shining.
Dr. Renzatl pulled a tissue from the dispenser on the table and offered it to him. "Did you cut yourself shaving?"
"Oh," Rieekan winced a smile. He knew exactly where to press the tissue. "I guess I did. I hadn't... When I decided not to cancel I went to shave. A beard, for a... on Alderaan a man grows a beard in his home. I think the original idea is in seclusion. But we'd do it on time off. During holidays, or... or in preparation of life events."
"For instance a marriage?" Dr. Renzatl asked.
"Yes, of course. A newly wedded couple spends two weeks together, and when they appear next, as a couple, the man's beard is new. Or different."
"And when there's a death, I presume. The grieving period."
"Thirty days is plenty of time to change one's beard, yes."
General Rieekan was on Naboo when he learned of Alderaan's destruction, Dr. Renzatl remembered. He had arrived at Buteral clean-shaven.
"It's the same for the woman's hair?" she asked.
"Yes. The arrangement of the braids. The idea is the same. You learn something about the person before speaking. Social place. Whether you're of age, pledged, widowed. Things like that."
"How interesting. One's thoughts are arranged before the encounter."
"Very much so. There's an expression we have, read the cut of the cheek."
"You don't have a beard."
"No." General Rieekan grinned again, that same, pained smile he often used to punctuate his speech. "I never did. I wasn't happy with... the way it grew in. It's spotty. Thin." Rieekan removed the tissue and stared at the bright red spot of blood on it. "I often felt, because of it... lacking."
"Lacking?" Dr. Renzatl made a note. It was rather a strong word.
Rieekan rubbed his jawline. "Well. Inadequate. Let's say that. Looks-wise. I was a good Alderaani. I had a career, a happy family."
"Only thin-bearded," Dr. Renzatl murmured.
Rieekan chuckled sadly at her comment. "Yes."
"Was it uncommon, to not have a beard?"
"No, I wouldn't say that. It certainly wasn't demanded." He nodded, and seemed to be remembering. "I was a good Alderaani."
"You were," Dr. Renzatl affirmed.
Rieekan seemed to shake himself. "It must ... I'm tired," he said. "I haven't had much sleep." He grinned at her. "I'm not as bad as I sound."
She regarded him a while, and then prompted, "But you almost canceled? Why was that?"
"There's a situation. Or not." Rieekan sighed heavily. "It's required constant monitoring. Waiting."
"Waiting for what?"
"Of course you don't know." He seemed to struggle with decision. "Again, I'm torn between my working life and my personal-"
"We have a confidence," Albrina reminded him. "This is my working life."
"Yes, of course." Rieekan nodded. "The situation hasn't developed, and I don't want to cause alarm among the arrivals." He took a breath, and spoke. "Thirty hours ago, scouts picked up an Imperial presence in the system. Four light cruisers, one in each quadrant of the system."
Albrina frowned. Immediately her mind went to Yavin and the hour before the Death Star's approach.
"A presence-" She didn't know how to phrase the question. The answer she wanted was to learn if there was any danger. "What does that mean?"
"A light cruiser isn't normally alarming. It's not a harbinger of battle. It's for patrols, inspections and the like. It's used to maintain laws and guard against illegal transport activities."
He had answered her silent question about any danger. "So why are they here? Surely, the survivors coming to Buteral are not illegal."
"They are not. The CTC has filed a protest but they've had no answer from the Empire yet as to why they were stationed."
"Do you have any idea why?"
"It could mean any number of things. Scouting the submoon for the strength of our presence, for an approach, the best way to attack-"
Albrina uncrossed her legs. "Goodness," she said, trying not to show her alarm. General Rieekan would have no worries about her repeating the information to anyone, and she hoped the stress of the situation was something he wanted to deal with now, during his appointment. It was certainly something she wanted to discuss.
This was the second time she might be in the crosshairs of war. She had joined the Alliance after an attack, and knew of course she had joined the ranks of a military organization, but her role, like the cruiser, was supportive. She prepared others' emotional stability before and after a fight. She herself was not prepared.
"It is my belief, however," General Rieekan was saying, and Albrina shook herself from her own thoughts, "that they are not interested in turning Buteral into a war zone."
"That's good to hear," Albrina said with relief.
"Yes. Of course we alerted the Ministry of War about the cruisers, and the Minister agrees with me. Nevertheless, they are closely watching the situation."
"If you are busy, General, I understand-"
"No. I needed to step away. My eyes no longer make sense of the monitors. I need some food, I need some sleep."
Albrina nodded. "Would you like some kaf?" she asked kindly.
"I would love some."
She waited while he fixed himself a cup and watched him stir creamer around. "Perhaps I asked too many questions about the situation and spent your time."
"We're all asking questions. There are some you haven't asked. And, because of this," Rieekan indicated his sessions meeting in her office by waving his hand, "I fear I might be asking some others wouldn't consider."
"Such as?"
"My impulse to evacuate. Do you know of the nerf matriarch?"
Dr. Renzatl knew what he meant and smiled slightly. "The guard of the herd."
"Yes. They alarm easily, nerfs. The matriarch gathers them up and moves them away."
"As general, you feel you are our guard?"
"You could say that."
"It seems to me a natural reaction. I can see why you view the Empire as a predator."
"Even after careful consideration and coming to the conclusion that Buteral will not come under attack, I want to hoot and bleat and gather everyone in a tight circle." Rieekan looked at his hands holding the dispo cup of kaf. "I have asked for a passenger shuttle to station nearby, in case. But while this is an Alliance territory it is leased to the CTC for refugee services. I have restrained myself. But...I feel..." He shook his head. "... vulnerable. Not like a general. Frightened."
"Frightened to come under attack?"
"Frightened for the arrivals. That... not only the Empire is a predator. That..." Rieekan passed a hand through his hair and made it look messier, "Goddesses. That I can't protect them. From anything. That the predator has already made his move and I can't stop it."
"A helplessness."
"Yes." He looked at her. "I'm projecting again, aren't I. The last moments of the people on Alderaan."
Dr. Renzatl let the statement ring. Sometimes she was greatly affected by the loss of the planet as expressed by the refugees.
"You can't blame yourself for not being there, General Rieekan," she said softly. "For not being able to call an alarm."
"For not being with my family."
"Yes. You were working. The Viceroy sent you to Naboo." Rieekan was nodding. They'd been over this before. "Not like a general," she made a notation on her datapad, "is this the same as the inadequacy of your beard?"
Rieean considered. "I don't think so. No. But a general doesn't bleat and hoot."
Dr. Renzatl smiled. "He barks orders."
"I am comfortable in the role. My training has been to assist leaders in formulating policies and decisions, but I find that I use my training for myself, and assist those under me to enforce them."
"An admirable work style."
"Do you think so? It's not a role I expected for myself, but sometimes life leads you down strange paths." Rieekan added, "For good and for bad."
"That's very true."
"My other conclusion," Rieekan said carefully, "because it's too much of a coincidence: approximately thirty hours ago the Millennium Falcon set course for Buteral from Imperial City. Have you seen the news?"
Dr. Renzatl shook her head. "Reception here is awful."
Rieekan smiled. "I have a droid redacting the items. Princess Leia spoke to the press while in Imperial City. She mentioned everything she's doing here. The civil death suit, the reparations fund. She told the story of the Death Star."
"Did she," Dr. Renzatl breathed, stunned and amazed and ... proud.
Another smile, this one small but genuine and admiring, crossed Rieekan's face. "Basically, she called the Emperor evil and a poor leader. More elegantly, but that's what it amounted to.
"She was on the Senate steps," Rieekan continued. "I recognized exactly where she was. And it is just blocks away from where the Organa apartment was. They had an entire floor. I used to travel with the Viceroy and I stayed there. She was wearing different clothes; ones I haven't seen here but were typical of what she might wear as a Princess about town. Maybe she had and I don't remember."
The casual remark about knowing where the Princess was, recognizing a place he was far from but which was still familiar, caused Albrina to glance at her shelves where the blackened bricks supported the row of data manuals.
She didn't interrupt him, and underneath his words her memory cast back to twenty-one year old Albrina Renzatl who couldn't recognize in the rubble where her family home had stood.
The topic was new; General Rieekan did not often discuss his work with the House of Organa. Indirectly he felt it helped lead to war and loss and he felt responsible, and it was hard to talk about. His grief for his family and homeland was at times so overwhelming that it simply came to describe him. The sad, wincing grin seemed permanent. Some people were cheerful, others pessimistic. The general was grieving.
"You know," he said. "I don't have much. I have the honor of working with her father."
"Helping him be a leader," Albrina murmured, and thought of her sister.
"Yes, exactly. The Just War," he quoted the title of Bail Organa's famous treatise. "I know she would be queen and she would continue the work of her mother and father. And that's all she has. We have that in common. Her father, the war, and nothing. The loneliness of nothing."
Albrina brought her hands to her face in a thoughtful pose, to hide her expression. She was moved.
"I'm a little envious of her, if I'm to be truthful," Rieekan admitted.
"How are you envious?"
"I came here... because I needed to. Because I didn't know what else to do. Because my people would be brought here, not by the nerf matriarch, but by a caring, experienced agency equipped to handle disaster. I feel... there isn't much I can do. I can make sure the aftermath of their trauma is well supplied and they are safe. But for my wife and sons..." he shrugged. "Nothing. More nothing."
Albrina's mouth was open, but she couldn't bring the words out her role as therapist would require. "Nothing," she repeated softly. She was thinking of her nephews.
"General," she said and stopped. Rieekan waited patiently. "Normally I would want to discuss your nothing. Its loneliness and helplessness. And I don't want to generalize, that this is true for all of you. That's cruel and dismissive. Instead I want to share with you."
Albrina pressed her lips tightly over her teeth and then released them. "I never have before. I'm not sure it's right. But..." she took a breath, and said with deliberation, "I lost family in the bombing of Corellia. My mother, my sister, and her three sons."
Rieekan's lips parted. He sat back a little. "Oh," he said.
Albrina nodded. "I think I was like you. There is no universal way to grieve." Her own words encouraged her to continue. They sounded like they came from a therapist. "There is no magic word, or pill, to take away the pain. Like all of you, I wasn't there when it happened. I didn't exactly have nothing; I had moved away. I had a home, a fiancé. Lots of clothes to wear." She shared a sad smile with him.
"I don't say this to add to the burden of your grief," she added.
"No, I understand." Rieekan's brow was furrowed. He was struggling, Albrina saw, not to hide displeasure at her selfish intrusion into his time or sympathize with her. He was thinking, working hard, because he thought her story somehow fit in with his. He was looking for it to help him.
Touched, Albrina continued. "The Princess once told me she feels like a receptacle for grief. That her... her situation, her pain, is so great she can take all else's."
"Yes." Rieekan nodded. "Pour it in. I like that. It's true."
"And that is how you come to be here. That is how I am here."
"The receptacle?"
"The grief. The understanding what others feel. The need to share it. By becoming General Rieekan, you, at least, express it. And you learn it can have a power."
"It can affect change," he said thoughtfully. "A war."
Albrina bobbed her head lightly in acknowledgement. "There is a lot of grief right now. It's raw. And very powerful. And do you see," she shifted in her seat as her legs recrossed, "it's not just your grief, the grief of the surviving Alderaani. It's everyone who has ever grieved, who understands, comes together."
"So my nothing isn't exactly that."
"You still have loss."
"I don't have my wife and sons. And you are missing your family." He had been looking at his lap but lifted his eyes to her face. "That was a long time ago."
"It was."
"But I have a kinship, in a way. Grief makes a family."
"That's a lovely way to put it."
Rieekan grimaced. "I'm not sure that's better."
Albrina's grin rushed across her face. "As you said, mine was a long time ago. You do allow the pleasure of life to return, even as the loss stays with you. And somehow the loss becomes... well, not exactly part of the pleasure, but in a way that's true. Perhaps it dictates it."
"Empathy gives it texture? Volume?"
"Yes!" Albrina hadn't talked about the nature of own grief in years. After a while not even with her husband.
"And if I didn't, if I didn't enjoy Tide's Rush, or the view of those humped hills rising from the fog, I would continue to have nothing."
"I think you would."
"You know, I do think about it. When I arrive at my office early. Before, when it was dark, I didn't watch the landscape. But now the lights are on, I see the fog and the eerie silhouette of those tall humps, and... I note that I see them, and I note that I am sad. It's almost as though it's my sadness that makes me see them; really notice them; how oddly beautiful they are."
"You find solace in life. Truly, that's beautiful, General."
Rieekan chewed on his cheek a long while. "I'm thinking of loneliness. And the Princess. Why I envy her."
"Go on."
"She is like me. All of us. She came here because, as Alderaani, she had to; but as Princess, it was required. I think her loneliness must be terrible. Because she is still the same, our Princess; she had to represent us, our homeworld. She can't change. She has to build something from the nothing."
"Yes."
"She can't change. It must be exhausting. But because of that, or in spite of that, she found a way to add to the nothing, or not have it. She took the fight!" Rieekan, suddenly passionate, leaned forward in his chair. "She went there, to his home, and she told him he is nothing!" He sat back heavily. "What I would give to do that."
"One could argue you are doing that. You joined the fight. You joined the Alliance."
"And I watch monitors and have meetings with the Minister of War. Yes. I'm fighting. But it's within the parameters of someone else's wisdom. She is not the nerf matriarch. She doesn't bleat and hoot. She gathers us in a circle, but not to keep us from harm. She wants us to fight back! To beat that predator away. All of us, kicking and biting."
"I see. You want a more active role."
"Perhaps," Rieekan nodded and his fingers played over his upper lip. "I worry about her, too."
"You do."
"Yes. Bail- her father- wanted for her the kind of role he had. Relatively safe. From a distance."
"Like yours is now."
"And of course she would be queen in a few years. But it's my belief he wasn't thinking so much of the crown as he was his own daughter and the danger he felt she was embracing."
"Do you still honor your service to the Viceroy?"
"I do," Rieekan nodded. "And to the House. Bail-" he laughed suddenly; it was hoarse and sad, "- would be having a fit right about now."
Dr. Renzatl smiled along with General Rieekan.
"He would," Rieekan finished with reminiscent softness. "Little did we know the planet wouldn't lose her queen, but that the queen would lose her planet. I need to keep her safe. For him. For us."
"Did she know your sons?"
"The Princess?" Rieekan was surprised by Dr. Renzatl's question. "Yes. Not well. She knew who they were."
"She is a good Alderaani."
"Of course she is."
"Let me pose this, General. You have the honor of working with her father, and she is tasked with continuing his legacy. What is looking after the Princess, the daughter of your good friend and colleague, to you?"
"You mean," Rieekan said slowly with a frown, "is it more than answering to Bail in the afterlife. You mean, do I provide something for her?"
"And she you."
Rieekan gave it some thought. "It's not only Bail I honor. It's her, and Alderaan."
"You give her, as much as you are able to, what she has lost."
"I can't give her her father."
"But his values, his lifework. Memory and emotion. Things which soothe the anguish of loss. They are a source of comfort."
"And she can't give me my sons, or my wife. She did say, in the press conference- she was talking to a crowd that had gathered; many were Alderaani- she said we should be- not willing, but that we shouldn't fear dying in this war because our loved ones already had."
"By fighting, you are able to reply to the last moments of the people of Alderaan."
A puzzled expression crossed Rieekan's face. "We are? But what would we say?"
"What is there to say?"
"I see this? I love you? I'll take care of this?"
Dr. Renzatl looked tender. "I like all of them. Especially the last. You couldn't stop it. You know that. But you'll respond, because you heard them."
Rieekan sighed.
"And perhaps together," Dr. Renzatl suggested, "both you and the Princess; all of you here, might perhaps start to feel a little less lonely?"
Rieekan blinked rapidly. "I have been lonely," he said.
There were never words for pure emotion, and Dr. Renzatl stayed silent and let the general feel it. She admired him for it, and for all the work he had done today. When he reached for another tissue, she spoke again. It was a good place to leave off for their next session, and she needed to allow time for him to regain his composure to return to work. The redness of his eyes would come from tears this time.
"The cruisers," she said. "What would they want with the Princess?"
"I don't know. They might wait until she has returned to show us their hand. There were four, I think, to learn where and when the ship she was on entered the system. We've been trying to hail the Millennium Falcon but of course they are in transit."
"The Millennium Falcon," Albrina said almost to herself. She'd forgotten about it. Again, it was that ship, a large detail of the Princess's story. "I hope the Captain is capable of dealing with the cruisers."
"Doubtless he is. I hope he's capable of not dealing with the cruisers."
Albrina appreciated the irony. "Well, the Princess is on board. If he runs hot, she strikes me as cool. That is a compliment, General," she qualified, in case the general misunderstood what she meant.
Rieekan indicated he understood. "We may not be able to warn them until they have entered the system."
"I see. We'll have to wait until they return, then."
Rieekan made that sad smile. "It's back to the monitors for me." He glanced at his chrono. "I'm going to nap for twenty minutes."
Albrina escorted the general to the door. She remembered how his odd energy gave her the feeling something had happened. She stood out the doorway of her building, listening to the roar of the sea as it rushed the shoal. It wasn't much, a Princess returning from a trip, but an element of change hung in the air, for all of them.
